Don't save and soak at the same time, and we don't mean baptism

I not only will be at the church on time, I will be an hour early for Sunday school.

Grabbing my laptop computer in the dark, I headed upstairs to hook up with the printer to put on paper a commentary I was planning to use for teaching. That done with a minimum of fuss, I put some photos I had made at a church event into a slide show for running in the church library window.

Beth Pratt

Down to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee and do a brief review of the historical setting for the morning's lesson in Romans.

Time flies, but I tend to creep.

I decide with all the extra time, I would indulge myself in a whirlpool bath. I didn't linger long because the computer was burning a disk of the slide show, at least I thought it was. Turns out, it burned to disk the operating system of my computer. Oops! Guess I'll have to read the directions next time.

But for the moment, I blissfully thought all had gone as planned.

Sitting down to apply my body cream, I slathered my legs, thinking how nicely this scented cream, a gift of bath accessories, spread.

I looked down at the tube in my hand as I started to squeeze more cream out. At about the same moment my arrested memory kicked in. This was not cream. It was the creamy non-soap cleanser I had just used in my bath. I will say it was gentle because my skin was not stinging.

My time advantage was escaping, but there was nothing else I could do but run another tub of water. I had applied the cleanser far too liberally to just wipe it off. Back in the tub. You guessed wrong. I know better than turning the whirlpool on with that much soap in the water.

Nevertheless, it took a bit to get all the suds off.

By this time the other sleeper was waking, but I kept my frustrations to myself. Even when I got back to the computer and discovered the slide show wasn't on the disk. It took a while, but I found the slide show in the computer. Putting my laptop into a bag with my Bible for a quick getaway, I finished dressing and was ready to leave almost an hour early.

It is amazing how many people get to the church by 8:30 a.m. or earlier! In the library, I attached my laptop to the 22-inch monitor that the pastor has kindly loaned me so that passers-by can easily spot themselves in the pictures. With the confidence born of having done this once before, I turned on the computer. Turns out my confidence was misplaced.

Oh, the equipment worked perfectly. But this time I could not find that slide show anywhere in the machine. I conducted every search I could imagine. Finally, I had to settle for letting it run through the original photo data, which meant that vertical pictures showed on screen as horizontal. I only hope that no one got a serious neck injury from trying to see those photos. Fortunately, most of the pictures were horizontal. The slide show I so carefully composed in my Adobe software is still missing. I KNOW I saved it.

I'm just glad that the congregational hymn selection that morning was not "Saved, Saved." I'm sure I couldn't have kept a straight face through the last words of the chorus, "Life now is sweet and my joy is complete, For I'm saved, saved, saved!"

Apparently, as far as that slide show was concerned, I only thought I was saved.

I may not be the master of the photo software program, but I do have some pride.

Just call me the Queen of Clean. After all, isn't cleanliness next to godliness? And I did make it to Sunday school on time. But this is not the end. I'm still going to read those directions one of these days. That's probably a good idea for all of those in church who consider themselves saved.